Centre for Public Policy Research (CPPR) is a think tank dedicated to intensive research on economic, social, and political issues.

Thursday, April 03, 2014

University Grants Commission (UCG)
to Control Technical Education: But has its Existing Controls Benefitted Education
in India?

UGCs new guidelines to
regulate technical institutions will vest this monolithic institution with more
power to control the educational sector in the country. Before such a power is
vested with the institution, we need to ask about the existing performance and
efficiency with which UGC is handling higher education in India. If there are
instances where the UGC can boast on its credentials, the latest move can be
accepted. But this being sparse, considering that we have very few educational
institutions that can compare its performances with international standards, I
believe that the present move is nothing but a transfer of inefficiency from
one to another regulator. It is also suspect that the UGC has been directly
involved in improving the efficiency of hundreds of institutes offering higher
education in India. I can vouch at least for the social sciences, which has moved
from a state of utter neglect to total desertion in the hands of this
regulator. I would perceive things to have improved in social sciences when students opt less for a course in the US and choose an Indian institution willingly for their higher studies.

The new move is in fact
taking the UGC closer to becoming a monopoly regulator. Whatever said and done
the apex court’s new ruling is going to weaken any effort at implementing all
long needed reforms in education in India by creating monopoly powers. The only
way in which reforms have progressed has been by increasing the number of regulations.
We need to ask ourselves the question: “what has been lacking in our
educational system that such inefficiencies (standards that the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) failed to uphold) crept into it? Would allowing a single apex body cure the malice?

As of now only a few
voice have critically examined the long-term impacts of this ruling.
Educational sector in India has a lot of short comings. There are more lags
than leaps here. Our resources to support the sector has not been the best. And
moreover, traditional teaching practices (reading out from the texts, endless
lectures etc.) have created clots in the massive and interconnected arterial system.
How do we deal with these functional problems? I believe that we need more consultation
on methods to improve the sector. For this we need to get the actual stakeholders
(including the students) to voice their opinion. To shorten the distance
between the UGC and the students/teachers would be the first step. The court of
course does not ask the students or the teachers on what is best according to
them. No one has represented our direct concerns either. For each of us to represent
these concerns to the UGC has been nothing short of a “Chalo Dilli” march by our
faculty and directors. The result has been trying and tiring.